Owen Guinn Smith -- WWII pilot, gold medalist in 1948

Patricia Yollin, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published
4:00 am PST, Saturday, January 24, 2004

Here is a picture of my father Owen Guinn Smith receiving the Olympic Gold Medal for the Pole Vault in London 1948
representing the USA and competing for the Olympic Club of San Francisco. Stephen Whitlock Smith, MD Telephone 253-576-6746 less

Here is a picture of my father Owen Guinn Smith receiving the Olympic Gold Medal for the Pole Vault in London 1948
representing the USA and competing for the Olympic Club of San Francisco. Stephen Whitlock ... more

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Here is a picture of my father Owen Guinn Smith receiving the Olympic Gold Medal for the Pole Vault in London 1948
representing the USA and competing for the Olympic Club of San Francisco. Stephen Whitlock Smith, MD Telephone 253-576-6746 less

Here is a picture of my father Owen Guinn Smith receiving the Olympic Gold Medal for the Pole Vault in London 1948
representing the USA and competing for the Olympic Club of San Francisco. Stephen Whitlock ... more

Owen Guinn Smith -- WWII pilot, gold medalist in 1948

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Owen Guinn Smith of San Francisco, a World War II pilot and former investment counselor who won a gold medal for pole vaulting in the 1948 Summer Olympics, has died at the age of 83.

His father, who lived on Russian Hill for more than three decades, was born in McKinney, Texas, but moved to Pasadena with his family as a child. He went to Pasadena High and graduated from UC Berkeley as a history major in 1942.

With World War II in full swing, he became a pilot in the Army Air Corps, flying "the hump" over the Himalayas and participating in the Allies' campaigns in Burma and on the Philippine island of Mindanao. Later, during the Korean War, he was recalled as an Air Force pilot and stationed in England.

He snagged his Olympic gold on a horribly windy and rainy London day. Mr. Smith was plagued with knee problems, resulting partly from a wartime injury when his plane was shot down. His first two attempts failed. For the third try, his son said, he switched to a bamboo pole sent to him by a Japanese pole vaulter he'd met after the war -- who couldn't compete in the games because athletes from Japan and Germany were barred.

"That's what it took to win," Stephen Smith said. "The Japanese person was very glad."

The winning vault was 14 feet, 1 1/4 inches, nowhere near Mr. Smith's personal best and far below today's records, achieved with fiberglass poles that didn't exist then. But it was enough, especially for someone who'd started out as a high jumper.

"He wanted to go to UC Berkeley, and they already had good high jumpers," Stephen Smith said. "But they didn't have any good pole vaulters at the time, so he took it up to give himself a competitive edge."

At Berkeley, Mr. Smith was captain of the 1940-41 track and field team.

Stephen Smith said his father's Olympic medal was displayed in the family's home, in a case on the wall, and was always available to his brother and him.

"We played with it," he said. "And in grade school, I'd bring my friends over to look at it."

He described his father as "a very private person but very charming when he wanted to be, someone who was totally in charge."

The career path Mr. Smith followed as an adult was varied and eclectic. He first worked at his alma mater in Berkeley and then became assistant dean at the Harvard Business School. After that, he moved on to a job as an investment counselor in Boston. Stephen Smith said his parents didn't like "the cold or taxes or corruption of Massachusetts" and missed the Bay Area greatly. So, amid the social ferment of the late 1960s, the "very conservative" ex-pilot and his wife, the late Nancy Jane Whitlock, returned to San Francisco and never left again. Mr. Smith worked here as administrator of the San Francisco branch of the Palo Alto Medical Clinic.

"I did try to move him at different times to Tacoma," his son said. "But he would not leave San Francisco. He wanted to be within sight of the Campanile and the Berkeley hills and the Golden Gate Bridge. He was very much grounded in this city."

His Hyde Street apartment afforded views of all these places. In his latter years, Mr. Smith was fond of taking daily walks along the San Francisco Marina and visiting the Cliff House and Sutro Heights. He also enjoyed crossword puzzles and became adept at using his Macintosh computer.